Posts tagged cognitive performance
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
Memory decline — a frequent complaint of menopausal women — potentially could be lessened by hypnotic relaxation therapy, say Baylor University researchers, who already have done studies showing that such therapy eases hot flashes, improves sleep and reduces stress in menopausal women.
Their review — “Memory Decline in Peri- and Post-menopausal Women: The Potential of Mind-Body Medicine to Improve Cognitive Performance” — is published in the journal Integrative Medicine Insights. October has been designated World Menopause Month by the International Menopause Society.
Initial research by Baylor, funded by the National Institutes of Health, focused on hot flashes, finding that hypnotic relaxation therapy lessened them, but “along the way, we discovered there are a lot of secondary benefits, including significantly improved sleep and mood,” said Jim R. Sliwinski, a doctoral student in the department of psychology and neuroscience in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences.
Co-researcher Gary Elkins, Ph.D., theorizes that sleep, mood and hot flashes associated with decreased estrogen also have a bearing on memory. Their publication, which reviews previous research by other scholars, proposes a framework for how mind-body interventions may improve memory, which could prove fruitful in doing future research.
“Memory decline may not be solely about decreased estrogen,” said Elkins, director of Baylor’s Mind-Body Medicine Research Laboratory and a professor of psychology and neuroscience.
Peri- and post-menopausal women may find mind-body therapies attractive for many reasons, among them that they do not have the side effects of medications or hormone therapy, said Elkins, author of “Relief from Hot Flashes: The Natural, Drug-Free Program to Reduce Hot Flashes, Improve Sleep and Ease Stress.”
While hormone therapy can increase estrogen, it also is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer and cardiovascular disease for some women, he said.
Researchers have noted that while memory decline can occur with aging in both men and women, women are more likely to report a greater number of memory problems, associating it with estrogen decline. Women also report more concerns about memory than pre-menopausal women do, according to several large-scale survey studies.
A factor that may impact memory is that women are dealing with increased responsibilities, stress or depression over such issues as caring for aging parents. In addition, their concern about memory problems may cause them to be more aware of memory lapses, Sliwinski said.
Even women who can safely be treated with estrogen do not necessarily have improved memory. “It sometimes even is associated with cognition problems,” he said.
Although there are questions about sleep’s specific role in forming and storing memories, researchers generally agree that consolidated sleep throughout a whole night is optimal for learning and memory.
Memory tests and scores over time with study participants — both pre-and post-menopausal — could help shed light on how menopause affects recollection, the Baylor researchers said.
(Image: Shutterstock)
Gaming vs. reading: Do they benefit teenagers with cognition or school performance?
Children have an increasing attraction towards electronic media in their play. With video games, phones and the internet in abundance, this article in Educational Psychology examines if such leisure activity is impacting children’s cognition or academic performance or whether it would be more beneficial to read.
After a busy day children do need downtime to rest and relax. Increasingly kids leisure time is spent gaming, but does it detract from homework or would kids be better off reading a book? Historical research shows in some cases that interactive gaming can have positive effects for cognition by promoting memory, attention and reasoning. Other speed oriented games have been shown to improve perception and motor skills, so should gaming for relaxation be encouraged? Lieury et al investigate whether type of leisure activity produces a ‘transfer effect’ influencing learning processes thus improving student performance at school. With an emphasis on gaming and reading they linked patterns of leisure activity with performance in phonology, reading and comprehension, maths, long term memory and reasoning. Fascinatingly gaming previously thought to improve fluid intelligence showed little or no positive correlations to performance whilst reading did, particularly in memory and comprehension. It seems then despite lack of a causal link that reading may be more likely to enhance academic performance.
Should we assume that time spent gaming and away from homework is harmful to students? A further comparison of reading and gaming to most frequent leisure activities showed no negative patterns but interestingly resting had a favourable effect on performance as well as reading. So frequent leisure activity is not necessarily harmful to progress, or always at the expense of homework but can be enriching. The authors conclude “we think that video games are mainly recreational activities and the cognitive stimulation provided is very different from school learning. On the contrary, the results of this survey fully justify the educational role of parents and teachers in promoting reading.”
(Image: Shutterstock)
You are what you eat, the saying goes, and now a study conducted by researchers at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Pittsburgh suggests that the oft-repeated adage applies not just to physical health but to brain power as well.
In a paper published in the early online edition of the journal Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids, the researchers compared the fatty acid profiles of breast milk from women in over two dozen countries with how well children from those same countries performed on academic tests.
Their findings show that the amount of omega-3 docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in a mother’s milk — fats found primarily in certain fish, nuts and seeds — is the strongest predictor of test performance. It outweighs national income and the number of dollars spent per pupil in schools.
DHA alone accounted for about 20 percent of the differences in test scores among countries, the researchers found.
On the other hand, the amount of omega-6 fat in mother’s milk — fats that come from vegetable oils such as corn and soybean — predict lower test scores. When the amount of DHA and linoleic acid (LA) — the most common omega-6 fat — were considered together, they explained nearly half of the differences in test scores. In countries where mother’s diets contain more omega-6, the beneficial effects of DHA seem to be reduced.
More omega-3, less omega-6
“Human intelligence has a physical basis in the huge size of our brains — some seven times larger than would be expected for a mammal with our body size,” said Steven Gaulin, UCSB professor of anthropology and co-author of the paper. “Since there is never a free lunch, those big brains need lots of extra building materials — most importantly, they need omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA. Omega-6 fats, however, undermine the effects of DHA and seem to be bad for brains.”
Both kinds of omega fat must be obtained through diet. But because diets vary from place to place, for their study Gaulin and his co-author, William D. Lassek, M.D., a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health and a retired assistant surgeon general, estimated the DHA and LA content — the good fat and the bad fat — in diets in 50 countries by examining published studies of the fatty acid profiles of women’s breast milk.
The profiles are a useful measure for two reasons, according to Gaulin. First, because various kinds of fats interfere with one another in the body, breast milk DHA shows how much of this brain-essential fat survives competition with omega-6. Second, children receive their brain-building fats from their mothers. Breast milk profiles indicate the amount of DHA children in each region receive in the womb, through breastfeeding, and from the local diet available to their mothers and to them after they are weaned.
The academic test results came from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which administers standardized tests in 58 nations. Gaulin and Lassek averaged the three PISA tests — math, science and reading ability — as their measure of cognitive performance. There were 28 countries for which the researchers found information about both breast milk and test scores.
DHA content: best predictor of math test performance
“Looking at those 28 countries, the DHA content of breast milk was the single best predictor of math test performance,” Gaulin said. The second best indicator was the amount of omega-6, and its effect is opposite. “Considering the benefits of omega-3 and the detriment of omega-6, we can get pretty darn close to explaining half the difference in scores between countries,” he added. When DHA and LA are considered together, he added, they are twice as effective at predicting test scores as either is alone, Gaulin said.
Gaulin and Lassek considered two economic factors as well: per capita gross domestic product (a measure of average wealth in each nation) and per student expenditures on education. “Each of these factors helps explain some of the differences between nations in test scores, but the fatty acid profile of the average mother’s milk in a given country is a better predictor of the average cognitive performance in that country than is either of the conventional socioeconomic measures people use,” said Gaulin.
From their analysis, the researchers conclude that both economic wellbeing and diet make a difference in cognitive test performance, and children are best off when they have both factors in their favor. “But if you had to choose one, you should choose the better diet rather than the better economy,” Gaulin said.
The current research follows a study published in 2008 that showed that the children of women who had larger amounts of gluteofemoral fat “depots” performed better on academic tests than those of mothers with less. “At that time we weren’t trying to identify the dietary cause,” explained Gaulin. “We found that this depot that has been evolutionarily elaborated in women is important to building a good brain. We were content at that time to show that as a way of understanding why the female body is as evolutionarily distinctive as it is.”
Now the researchers are looking at diet as the key to brain-building fat, since mothers need to acquire these fats in the first place.
Their results are particularly interesting in 21st-century North America, Gaulin noted, because our current agribusiness-based diets provide very low levels of DHA — among the lowest in the world. Thanks to two heavily government-subsidized crops — corn and soybeans — the average U.S. diet is heavy in the bad omega-6 fatty acids and far too light on the good omega-3s, Gaulin said.
Wrong kind of polyunsaturated fat
“Back in the 1960s, in the middle of the cardiovascular disease epidemic, people got the idea that saturated fats were bad and polyunsaturated fats were good,” he explained. “That’s one reason margarine became so popular. But the polyunsaturated fats that were increased were the ones with omega-6, not omega-3. So our message is that not only is it advisable to increase omega 3 intake, it’s highly advisable to decrease omega-6 — the very fats that in the 1960s and ’70s we were told we should be eating more of.”
Gaulin added that mayonnaise is, in general, the most omega-6-laden food in the average person’s refrigerator. “If you have too much of one — omega-6 — and too little of the other — omega 3 — you’re going to end up paying a price cognitively,” he said.
The issue is a huge concern for women, Gaulin noted, because “that’s where kids’ brains come from. But it’s important for men as well because they have to take care of the brains their moms gave them.
“Just like a racecar burns up some of its motor oil with every lap, your brain burns up omega-3 and you need to replenish it every day,” he said.
(Image: Stacy Librandi)
Older adults have morning brains! Study shows noticeable differences in brain function across the day
Older adults who are tested at their optimal time of day (the morning), not only perform better on demanding cognitive tasks but also activate the same brain networks responsible for paying attention and suppressing distraction as younger adults, according to Canadian researchers.
The study, published online July 7th in the journal Psychology and Aging (ahead of print publication), has yielded some of the strongest evidence yet that there are noticeable differences in brain function across the day for older adults.
“Time of day really does matter when testing older adults. This age group is more focused and better able to ignore distraction in the morning than in the afternoon,” said lead author John Anderson, a PhD candidate with the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences and University of Toronto, Department of Psychology.
“Their improved cognitive performance in the morning correlated with greater activation of the brain’s attentional control regions – the rostral prefrontal and superior parietal cortex – similar to that of younger adults.”
Asked how his team’s findings may be useful to older adults in their daily activities, Anderson recommended that older adults try to schedule their most mentally-challenging tasks for the morning time. Those tasks could include doing taxes, taking a test (such as a driver’s license renewal), seeing a doctor about a new condition, or cooking an unfamiliar recipe.
In the study, 16 younger adults (aged 19 – 30) and 16 older adults (aged 60-82) participated in a series of memory tests during the afternoon from 1 – 5 p.m. The tests involved studying and recalling a series of picture and word combinations flashed on a computer screen. Irrelevant words linked to certain pictures and irrelevant pictures linked to certain words also flashed on the screen as a distraction. During the testing, participants’ brains were scanned with fMRI which allows researchers to detect with great precision which areas of the brain are activated. Older adults were 10 percent more likely to pay attention to the distracting information than younger adults who were able to successfully focus and block this information. The fMRI data confirmed that older adults showed substantially less engagement of the attentional control areas of the brain compared to younger adults. Indeed, older adults tested in the afternoon were “idling” – showing activations in the default mode (a set of regions that come online primarily when a person is resting or thinking about nothing in particular) indicating that perhaps they were having great difficulty focusing. When a person is fully engaged with focusing, resting state activations are suppressed.
When 18 older adults were morning tested (8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.) they performed noticeably better, according to two separate behavioural measures of inhibitory control. They attended to fewer distracting items than their peers tested at off-peak times of day, closing the age difference gap in performance with younger adults. Importantly, older adults tested in the morning activated the same brain areas young adults did to successfully ignore the distracting information. This suggests that when older adults are tested is important for both how they perform and what brain activity one should expert to see.
“Our research is consistent with previous science reports showing that at a time of day that matches circadian arousal patterns, older adults are able to resist distraction,” said Dr. Lynn Hasher, senior author on the paper and a leading authority in attention and inhibitory functioning in younger and older adults.
The Baycrest findings offer a cautionary flag to those who study cognitive function in older adults. “Since older adults tend to be morning-type people, ignoring time of day when testing them on some tasks may create an inaccurate picture of age differences in brain function,” said Dr. Hasher, senior scientist at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute and Professor of Psychology at University of Toronto.
(Source: baycrest.org)
Chimp Intelligence “Runs In Families,” Environment Less Important
A chimpanzee’s intelligence is largely determined by its genes, while environmental factors may be less important than scientists previously thought, according to a Georgia State University research study.
The study found that some, but not all, cognitive, or mental, abilities, in chimpanzees depend significantly on the genes they inherit. The findings are reported in the latest issue of Current Biology.
“Intelligence runs in families,” said Dr. William Hopkins, professor in the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Georgia State and research scientist in the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University. “The suggestion here is that genes play a really important role in their performance on tasks while non-genetic factors didn’t seem to explain a lot. So that’s new.”
The role of genes in human intelligence or IQ has been studied for years, but Hopkins’ study is among the first to address heritability in cognitive abilities in nonhuman primates. Studies have shown that human intelligence is inherited through genes, but social and environmental factors, such as formal education and socioeconomic status, also play a role and are somewhat confounded with genetic factors. Chimpanzees, which are highly intelligent and genetically similar to humans, do not have these additional socio-cultural influences.
“Chimps offer a really simple way of thinking about how genes might influence intelligence without, in essence, the baggage of these other mechanisms that are confounded with genes in research on human intelligence,” Hopkins said.
The study involved 99 chimpanzees, ranging in age from 9 to 54, who completed 13 cognitive tasks designed to test a variety of abilities. Hopkins used quantitative genetics analysis to link the degree of relatedness between the chimpanzees to their similarities or differences in performance on the various cognitive measures to determine whether cognitive performance is inherited in chimpanzees.
Genes were found to play a role in overall cognitive abilities, as well as the performance on tasks in several categories.
Traditionally, researchers studying animal intelligence or animal learning have shared the view that environment and how previous behavior is reinforced affect how animals perform on a particular task.
“In our case, at least, it suggests that purely environmental explanations don’t really seem to tell the whole story,” Hopkins said. “Genes matter as well.”
Hopkins also studied the structure of chimpanzee intelligence to determine whether there were any similarities to the structure of human intelligence.
“We wanted to see if we gave a sample of chimpanzees a large array of tasks,” he said, “would we find essentially some organization in their abilities that made sense. The bottom line is that chimp intelligence looks somewhat like the structure of human intelligence.”
In the future, Hopkins wants to continue the study with an expanded sample size. He would also like to pursue studies to determine which genes are involved in intelligence and various cognitive abilities as well as how genes are linked to variation in the organization of the brain.
Hopkins also would like to determine which genes changed in human evolution that allowed humans to have such advanced intelligence.
(Image: Anup Shah / Nature Picture Library)
Study finds cognitive performance can be improved in teens months,years after traumatic brain injury
Traumatic brain injuries from sports, recreational activities, falls or car accidents are the leading cause of death and disability in children and adolescents. While previously it was believed that the window for brain recovery was at most one year after injury, new research from the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas published online today in the open-access journal Frontiers in Neurology shows cognitive performance can be improved to significant degrees months, and even years, after injury, given targeted brain training.
"The after-effects of concussions and more severe brain injuries can be very different and more detrimental to a developing child or adolescent brain than an adult brain," said Dr. Lori Cook, study author and director of the Center for BrainHealth’s pediatric brain injury programs. "While the brain undergoes spontaneous recovery in the immediate days, weeks, and months following a brain injury, cognitive deficits may continue to evolve months to years after the initial brain insult when the brain is called upon to perform higher-order reasoning and critical thinking tasks."
Twenty adolescents, ages 12-20 who experienced a traumatic brain injury at least six months prior to participating in the research and were demonstrating gist reasoning deficits, or the inability to “get the essence” from dense information, were enrolled in the study. The participants were randomized into two different cognitive training groups – strategy-based gist reasoning training versus fact-based memory training.
Participants completed eight, 45-minute sessions over a one-month period. Researchers compared the effects of the two forms of training on the ability to abstract meaning and recall facts. Testing included pre- and post-training assessments, in which adolescents were asked to read several texts and then craft a high-level summary, drawing upon inferences to transform ideas into novel, generalized statements, and recall important facts.
After training, only the gist-reasoning group showed significant improvement in the ability to abstract meanings – a foundational cognitive skill to everyday life functionality. Additionally, the gist-reasoning-trained group showed significant generalized gains to untrained areas including executive functions of working memory (i.e., holding information in mind for use – such as performing mental addition or subtraction ) and inhibition (i.e., filtering out irrelevant information). The gist-reasoning training group also demonstrated increased memory for facts, even though this skill was not specifically targeted in training.
"These preliminary results are promising in that higher-order cognitive training that focuses on ‘big picture’ thinking improves cognitive performance in ways that matter to everyday life success," said Dr. Cook. "What we found was that training higher-order cognitive skills can have a positive impact on untrained key executive functions as well as lower-level, but also important, processes such as straightforward memory, which is used to remember details. While the study sample was small and a larger trial is needed, the real-life application of this training program is especially important for adolescents who are at a very challenging life-stage when they face major academic and social complexities. These cognitive challenges require reasoning, filtering, focusing, planning, self-regulation, activity management and combating ‘information overload,’ which is one of the chief complaints that teens with concussions express."
This research advances best practices by implicating changes to common treatment schedules for traumatic brain injury and concussion. The ability to achieve cognitive gains through a brain training treatment regimen at chronic stages of brain injury (6 months or longer) supports the need to monitor brain recovery annually and offer treatment when deficits persist or emerge later.
"Brain injuries require routine follow-up monitoring. We need to make sure that optimized brain recovery continues to support later cognitive milestones, and that is especially true in the case of adolescents," said Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman, study author, founder and chief director of the Center for BrainHealth and Dee Wyly Distinguished University Chair at The University of Texas at Dallas. "What’s promising is that no matter the severity of the injury or the amount of time since injury, brain performance improved when teens were taught how to strategically process incoming information in a meaningful way, instead of just focusing on rote memorization."
(Source: brainhealth.utdallas.edu)
(Image caption: In Greek mythology, Clotho – the eponym for the anti-aging factor klotho – is the Fate who spins the thread of life. Here, the goddess spins the metaphorical thread of life that is DNA, influencing lifespan and cognition. Illustration by Michael Griffin Kelley)
Better Cognition Seen with Gene Variant Carried by 1 in 5 People
A scientific team led by the Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco has discovered that a common form of a gene already associated with long life also improves learning and memory, a finding that could have implications for treating age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s.
The researchers found that people who carry a single copy of the KL-VS variant of the KLOTHO gene perform better on a wide variety of cognitive tests. When the researchers modeled the effects in mice, they found it strengthened the connections between neurons that make learning possible – what is known as synaptic plasticity – by increasing the action of a cell receptor critical to forming memories.
The discovery is a major step toward understanding how genes improve cognitive ability and could open a new route to treating diseases like Alzheimer’s. Researchers have long suspected that some people may be protected from the disease because of their greater cognitive capacity, or reserve. Since elevated levels of the klotho protein appear to improve cognition throughout the lifespan, raising klotho levels could build cognitive reserve as a bulwark against the disease.
“As the world’s population ages, cognitive frailty is our biggest biomedical challenge,” said Dena Dubal, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurology, the David A. Coulter Endowed Chair in Aging and Neurodegeneration at UCSF and lead author of the study, published May 8 in Cell Reports. “If we can understand how to enhance brain function, it would have a huge impact on people’s lives.”
First to Link Between Klotho Variant and Better Cognition
Klotho was discovered in 1997 and named after the Fate from Greek mythology who spins the thread of life.
The investigators found that people who carry a single copy of the KL-VS variant of the KLOTHO gene, roughly 20 percent of the population, have more klotho protein in their blood than non-carriers. Besides increasing the secretion of klotho, the KL-VS variant may also change the action of the protein and is known to lessen age-related cardiovascular disease and promote longevity.
The team’s report is the first to link the KL-VS variant, or allele, to better cognition in humans, and buttresses these findings with genetic, electrophysiological, biochemical and behavioral experiments in mice.
The researchers tested the associations between the allele and age-related human cognition in three separate studies involving more than 700 people without dementia between the ages of 52 and 85. Altogether, it took about three years to conduct the work.
“These surprising results pave a promising new avenue of research,” said Roderick Corriveau, PhD, program director at NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). “Although preliminary, they suggest klotho could be used to bump up cognition for people suffering from dementia.”
Learning Better at All Stages of Life
Having the KL-VS allele did not seem to protect people from age-related cognitive decline. But overall the effect was to boost cognition, so that the middle-aged study participants began their decline from a higher point.
“Based on what was known about klotho, we expected it to affect the brain by changing the aging process,” said senior author Lennart Mucke, MD, who directs neurological research at the Gladstone Institutes and is a professor of neurology and the Joseph B. Martin Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience at UCSF. “But this is not what we found, which suggested to us that we were on to something new and different.”
To get a closer look at how the gene variant operates, the researchers used mice that were engineered to produce more of the mouse version of klotho and found that these mice learned better at all stages of life. Put through mazes, these transgenic mice were more likely to try different routes, an indication that they had superior working memory. In a test of spatial learning and memory, the mice with extra klothoperformed twice as well.
Researchers then analyzed the mouse brain tissue and found that the mice with elevated klotho had twice as many GluN2B subunits within synaptic connections. GluN2B is part of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor, or NMDAR, a key receptor involved in synaptic plasticity.
The researchers found more GluN2B-containing receptors in the hippocampus and frontal cortex, brain regions that support cognitive functions. When the researchers gave the mice a drug that blocks the action of these receptors, the klotho-enhanced mice lost their cognitive advantage.
Study Examines Vitamin D Deficiency and Cognition Relationship
Vitamin D deficiency and cognitive impairment are common in older adults, but there isn’t a lot of conclusive research into whether there’s a relationship between the two.
A new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center published online ahead of print this month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society enhances the existing literature on the subject.
“This study provides increasing evidence that suggests there is an association between low vitamin D levels and cognitive decline over time,” said lead author Valerie Wilson, M.D., assistant professor of geriatrics at Wake Forest Baptist. “Although this study cannot establish a direct cause and effect relationship, it would have a huge public health implication if vitamin D supplementation could be shown to improve cognitive performance over time because deficiency is so common in the population.”
Wilson and colleagues were interested in the association between vitamin D levels and cognitive function over time in older adults. They used data from the Health, Aging and Body composition (Health ABC) study to look at the relationship. The researchers looked at 2,777 well-functioning adults aged 70 to 79 whose cognitive function was measured at the study’s onset and again four years later. Vitamin D levels were measured at the 12-month follow-up visit.
The Health ABC study cohort consists of 3,075 Medicare-eligible, white and black, well-functioning, community-dwelling older adults who were recruited between April 1997 and June 1998 from Pittsburgh, Pa., and Memphis, Tenn.
“With just the baseline observational data, you can’t conclude that low vitamin D causes cognitive decline. When we looked four years down the road, low vitamin D was associated with worse cognitive performance on one of the two cognitive tests used,” Wilson said. “It is interesting that there is this association and ultimately the next question is whether or not supplementing vitamin D would improve cognitive function over time.”
Wilson said randomized, controlled trials are needed to determine whether vitamin D supplementation can prevent cognitive decline and definitively establish a causal relationship.
“Doctors need this information to make well-supported recommendations to their patients,” Wilson said. “Further research is also needed to evaluate whether specific cognitive domains, such as memory versus concentration, are especially sensitive to low vitamin D levels.”
Better memory at ideal temperature
People’s working memory functions better if they are working in an ambient temperature where they feel most comfortable. That is what Leiden psychologists Lorenza Colzato and Roberta Sellaro conclude after having conducted research. They are publishing their findings in Psychological Research.
Studied for the first time
Everyone knows from experience that climate and temperature influence how you feel. But what about our ability to think? Does ambient temperature affect that too? The little research that has been done on this question shows that cooler environments promote cognitive performance when performing complex thinking tasks. Colzato and Sellaro are the first to investigate whether a person’s working memory works better when the ambient temperature perfectly matches his or her preference.
N-back test
To study the influence ambient temperature has on cognitive skills, Colzato and Sellaro performed tests on two groups of participants. One group had a preference for a cool environment, the other group preferred a warm one. The test subjects had to carry out thinking tasks in three different spaces. In the first the temperature was 25 degrees Celsius (77 Fahrenheit), in the second it was 15 degrees (59 Fahrenheit), and in the third the thermostat was set to 20 (68 Fahrenheit). The thinking task that the subjects had to perform was the so-called N-back task. Different letters would appear one after the other on the computer screen. Subjects had to indicate whether the letter that they saw was the same as the one they had seen two steps earlier.
Idea confirmed
Test subjects proved to perform better in a room with their preferred temperature. The conjecture is that working in one’s preferred temperature counteracts ‘ego depletion’: sources of energy necessary to be able to carry out mental tasks get used up less quickly. ‘The results confirm the idea that temperature influences cognitive ability. Working in one’s ideal temperature can promote efficiency and productivity,’ according to Colzato and Sellaro.
Study says we’re over the hill at 24
It’s a hard pill to swallow, but if you’re over 24 years of age you’ve already reached your peak in terms of your cognitive motor performance, according to a new Simon Fraser University study.
SFU’s Joe Thompson, a psychology doctoral student, associate professor Mark Blair, Thompson’s thesis supervisor, and Andrew Henrey, a statistics and actuarial science doctoral student, deliver the news in a just-published PLOS ONE Journal paper.
In one of the first social science experiments to rest on big data, the trio investigates when we start to experience an age-related decline in our cognitive motor skills and how we compensate for that.
The researchers analyzed the digital performance records of 3,305 StarCraft 2 players, aged 16 to 44. StarCraft 2 is a ruthless competitive intergalactic computer war game that players often undertake to win serious money.
Their performance records, which can be readily replayed, constitute big data because they represent thousands of hours worth of strategic real-time cognitive-based moves performed at varied skill levels.
Using complex statistical modeling, the researchers distilled meaning from this colossal compilation of information about how players responded to their opponents and more importantly, how long they took to react.
“After around 24 years of age, players show slowing in a measure of cognitive speed that is known to be important for performance,” explains Thompson, the lead author of the study, which is his thesis. “This cognitive performance decline is present even at higher levels of skill.”
But there’s a silver lining in this earlier-than-expected slippery slope into old age. “Our research tells a new story about human development,” says Thompson.
“Older players, though slower, seem to compensate by employing simpler strategies and using the game’s interface more efficiently than younger players, enabling them to retain their skill, despite cognitive motor-speed loss.”
For example, older players more readily use short cut and sophisticated command keys to compensate for declining speed in executing real time decisions.
The findings, says Thompson, suggest “that our cognitive-motor capacities are not stable across our adulthood, but are constantly in flux, and that our day-to-day performance is a result of the constant interplay between change and adaptation.”
Thompson says this study doesn’t inform us about how our increasingly distracting computerized world may ultimately affect our use of adaptive behaviours to compensate for declining cognitive motor skills.
But he does say our increasingly digitized world is providing a growing wealth of big data that will be a goldmine for future social science studies such as this one.